Introduction. Orthopaedic surgeries are major procedures, often associated with perioperative risk. They are especially challenging for elderly patients afflicted with several comorbidities and cardiovascular risk factors. Currently, one of the most frequent types of orthopaedic surgeries is joint alloplasties of hip or knee. The aim of this study was to establish the clinical characteristics of hypertensive patients undergoing total hip or knee replacement and to describe the frequency of the early complication of the surgery, which is a need for blood transfusion.

Material and methods. The study enrolled 199 consecutive patients who underwent hip or knee alloplasty. From this group patients with previous diagnosis of hypertension were selected for further assessment. All patients were screened for presence of cardiovascular risk factors and cardiovascular disease, according to the current guidelines. All patients were also followed for the necessity of blood transfusion during the hospitalisation.

Results. From the screened population 135 patients had previous diagnosis of hypertension and met inclusion criteria (mean age 69.0 } 9.3 years, 30.4% male). From those patients, 70 (48.1%) underwent knee replacement, and 65 (51.9%) had hip replacement. As for the prevalence of cardiovascular disease, 16 (11.9%) had coronary artery disease, 5 (3.7%) had a history of previous myocardial infarction and 2 (1.5%) had diagnosed heart failure. Cardiovascular risk factors were also highly prevalent in the study population, 26 (19.3%) patients had diagnosed dyslipidemia, 27 (20.0%) had diabetes and 58 (43.0%) were obese. There were no statistical differences in the prevalence of those factors between patients with hip and knee replacement. 33 (24.4%) had blood loss during the operation, which led to a need for blood transfusion (19 (29.2%) patients in hip replacement group, and 14 (20%) in knee replacement group, p = 0.05). We found no differences in the prevalence of cardiovascular disease and cardiovascular risk factors between patients who required and did not require blood transfusion (p > 0.05).

Conclusions. Hypertensive patients who undergo hip or knee replacement have high prevalence of cardiovascular risk factors and other cardiovascular disease, therefore are at high perioperative risk. No differences are seen between patients with hip and knee replacement. There is also a high frequency of blood transfusions in this group.